Media

«Homo Deus» and the Impact of Digitalization on Society

Digitalization surrounds us all the time. We depend on it and we are enhancing it. With modern technology, humankind will adopt godlike skills, which even might allow us to postpone death. In his worldwide bestseller «Homo Deus», the historian Yuval Noah Harari philosophizes about how our lives will change in the course of digitalization.

Wherein do you see the link from deity – which you describe inyour book – to a new stage of human evolution in the age ofdigitalization and the Internet of Things?

Homo Deus means «man-god». It refers to humans who possess divine abilities. We are not there yet, but we are on the way to become gods. I mean this literally. We will acquire abilities that traditionally were thought to be divine abilities – in particular, the ability to engineer and create life. Just as in the Bible God created animals, plants, and humans according to his wishes, in the 21st century we will probably learn how to design and manufacture animals, plants, and even humans according to our wishes. This will not just be the greatest revolution in history, but the greatest revolution in biology since the appearance of life on earth. For four billion years, the laws of natural selection governed life. No matter what strange and bizarre shapes life undertook, it remained confined to the organic realm. Now science might replace natural selection with intelligent design and might even start creating nonorganic life forms with the help of genetic engineering. We will use direct brain-computer interfaces in order to create cyborgs (beings that combine organic parts with inorganic parts) and we may even succeed in creating completely inorganic beings. The main products of the 21st century economy will not be textiles, vehicles, and weapons but bodies, brains, and minds instead. After four billion years of organic life shaped by natural selection, science is ushering in the era of inorganic life shaped by intelligent design.

Do you think that there are limits to technological development?

I don’t know. Given enough time, almost anything might be achieved.

In your opinion, from which technological invention hashumankind already benefited in this age of digitalization?

From many inventions. Thanks to new technologies, today more people are dying from eating too much than from eating too little and more people are dying of old age than from infectious diseases for the first time in history. There are still billions of poor people in the world suffering from malnutrition, but mass famines are becoming rare. In the past, every few years there was a drought or flooding or some other natural catastrophe, food production sharply declined, and millions of people starved to death. Today, humankind produces so much food and can transport it so quickly and cheaply, that natural disasters by themselves will not result in mass starvation anymore. There are no longer any natural famines in the world – there are only human-made ones. The difference between earlier days and today is, that humankind would be capable of preventing such famines, e.g. through politics and sustainable behavior.

Looking ahead, humankind will have huge power and responsibilitydue to digitalization. How do you think people will usethat power in the future, when visualizing the best case?

Technology could certainly help us to deal with the major problems of the 21st century. Take climate change, for example. The only way to stop climate change is to stop economic growth. However, no government can do that and remain in power. Therefore the only realistic hope of stopping climate change is to develop new eco-friendly technologies that can sustain economic growth without destroying the ecosystem. Diseases are another obvious example. By constantly monitoring your body with biometric sensors and by sharing and comparing your data with those of millions of others, corporations and governments could offer you much better healthcare than ever before. They could e.g. detect cancer when it is only beginning to spread in your body and when it is very easy to cure. They could similarly warn you against impending heart attacks, tell you exactly what to eat and when, and advise you about what kind of climate and work suits you best. However, to enjoy such wonderful healthcare, you will have to give up your privacy, and allow the government or the corporation to constantly monitor you and to know you better than you know yourself. It is a hard and frightening choice.

What social consequences does progressive digitalizationhave in your opinion? Will there be bigger class distinctions inthe future? How will those differences become noticeable asseen in concrete examples?

There is a danger that digitalization will result in much bigger class differences. Economic and political power might be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Most people might become economically useless and politically powerless. As biotechnology improves moreover, it will be possible to extend human lifespans and to upgrade human abilities, but the new wonder treatments might be expensive, and might not be freely available for everybody. Therefore human society in the 21st century may be the most unequal in history since the upper classes will not only be richer than the rest of humankind, but will also live much longer and be far more talented. For the first time in history, economic inequality will be translated into biological inequality. Hence humankind will split into biological castes – an upper caste of upgraded superhumans, and a massive lower class of useless people. We may eventually enter a post-work world.

Will it soon be possible to postpone death using modern technology?What will the life expectancy of humankind then be?

For most of history, death was seen as a metaphysical phenomenon. We die because God decreed it. People believed that death could only be defeated by some grand metaphysical gesture such as Christ’s Second Coming. Lately science has redefined death as a technical problem and believes that every technical problem has some technical solution. We do not need to wait for God in order to overcome death, a couple of geeks in a lab could do this. A number of very serious scientists believe that we should at least be able to dramatically increase human lifespans in the 21st century, even if we don’t overcome death altogether. They point out that, in the 20th century we have doubled the average life expectancy from about 35/40 to 75. Thus, we should at least be able to do so again. Personally, I am more skeptical. It is true that over the last 100 years the average life expectancy has doubled, but it is dangerous to extrapolate and conclude that it will be easy to double it again. In pre-modern societies, the average life expectancy wasn’t high, because people died young from malnutrition, infectious diseases, and violence. Yet those who escaped famine, plague, and war could live well into their seventies and eighties, even in ancient times. The average natural lifespan of «Homo sapiens» seems to be somewhere between 70 and 90. So far, modern medicine has not extended this by one single year. For that, medicine will need to reengineer the most fundamental structures and processes of the human body. I doubt we can do that by 2050 or 2100. However, within another century or two, it might well be possible to grant unlimited lifespans, at least to the rich, who could afford the necessary treatments. Therefore, my position is that humankind has the potential to overcome old age and death, but it will probably take a few centuries rather than a few decades.

In which social areas have humans already become unnecessary?In which areas will humans always be essential?

Many professions are already in the process of disappearing – from farm workers to travel agents. I do not think there is any area in which humans will always have an edge. Automation threatens to replace not just taxi drivers and textile workers, but also teachers, lawyers, and doctors. For example, the first and foremost task of most physicians is to diagnose diseases correctly and then suggest the best available treatment.

If I arrive at the clinic complaining of fever and diarrhea, I might be suffering from food poisoning. My physician has only a few minutes to make a correct diagnosis and to cross-reference this information with my medical history and with the vast world of human maladies. The same symptoms might result from a stomach virus, cholera, cancer, or some unknown new disease. Alas, not even the most diligent doctor can remember all my previous ailments and checkups. Similarly, no doctor can be familiar with every illness or drug, or read every new article published in every medical journal. To top it all, doctors are sometimes tired or hungry or perhaps even sick, which affects their judgments. Now consider IBM’s famous Watson – an artificial intelligence system that is now groomed to do more serious work, particularly in diagnosing diseases. An Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as Watson has enormous potential advantages over human doctors. In its databanks, it can hold information about every known illness and medicine in history. It can update these databanks daily, not only with the findings of new researches, but also with medical statistics gathered from every linked-in clinic and hospital in the world. Watson will also be intimately familiar with not only my entire genome and my day-to-day medical history, but also with the genomes and medical histories of my parents, siblings, cousins, neighbors, and friends. It will know instantly whether I visited a tropical country recently, whether I have recurring stomach infections, whether there have been cases of cancer in my family, or whether people all over town are complaining about diarrhea this morning. Besides, Watson will never be tired, hungry, or sick, and will have all the time in the world for me. I could sit comfortably on my sofa at home and answer hundreds of questions, telling it exactly how I feel. Indeed, an AI system will not need to wait until I feel pain and start complaining. It could monitor my blood pressure, heart rate, sugar level, and brain activity 24 hours a day via biometric sensors. Therefore, it could diagnose diseases when they are just beginning, and when it is still cheap and very easy to deal with them. A plethora of tough technical problems still prevent AI systems like Watson and its ilk from displacing most doctors tomorrow morning. Yet these technical problems – however difficult – only need to be solved once. The training of a human physician is a complicated and expensive process that lasts years, and in the end, all you get is one doctor. If you want two doctors, you have to repeat the entire process from scratch. In contrast, if and when you solve the technical problems which are still hampering AI from displacing most doctors, you will get an infinite number of doctors, available 24/7 in every corner of the world.

Will Artificial Intelligence ever be able to replace human emotionsand empathy?

As explained in the example above, AI will be able to acquire emotional intelligence and to understand human emotions even better than we can. Sticking to the Watson example, some people argue that an algorithm could never replace human empathy. If your CT indicates that you have cancer, would you prefer to receive the news from a cold machine, or from a human doctor attentive to your emotional state? How about receiving the news from an attentive machine that tailors its words to your feelings and personality? Emotions are biochemical phenomena and an AI system could detect your emotions with the same accuracy as it detects your tumors. A human doctor recognizes your emotional state by analyzing external signals such as your facial expression and your tone of voice. An AI system could not only analyze such external signals more accurately than a human but simultaneously analyze numerous internal indicators by monitoring your blood pressure, brain activities, and countless other biometric data. Hence, an intelligent IT system could know exactly how you feel and could then tell you precisely what you need to hear in just the right tone of voice. For all their vaunted emotional intelligence, human beings are often overwhelmed by their own emotions and react in counterproductive ways. For example, when encountering an angry person, they start shouting, and when listening to a fearful person, they let their own anxieties run wild. Watson would never succumb to such temptations. Having no emotions of its own, it would always offer the most appropriate response to your emotional state. However, it seems far less likely that AI will develop emotions of its own. We should not confuse intelligence with consciousness. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things, such as pain, joy, love, and anger. In mammals, the two go together. Consequently, high intelligence has always gone hand in hand with consciousness until now. However, intelligence is now decoupling from consciousness. We are developing non-conscious algorithms that can play chess, drive vehicles, fight wars, and diagnose diseases better than we can. Science fiction movies generally assume that in order to match and surpass human intelligence, computers will have to develop consciousness. But real science tells a different story. There might be several alternative ways leading to super-intelligence, only some of which pass through the straits of consciousness. For millions of years, organic evolution has been slowly sailing along the conscious route. The evolution of inorganic computers may completely bypass these narrow straits, charting a different and much quicker course to super-intelligence.

In the course of your life, which technological achievementsaffected you significantly?

I value antibiotics and vaccinations highly because without the help of modern medicine I would probably have died long ago. I also value the invention of the internet since I met my husband online.

Could you imagine living with a yet undetected native tribe inthe Brazilian primeval forest in harmony with nature and withoutany form of technology?

At 41, there is no way I can acquire the necessary skills to survive in a primeval forest. However, if I could live as a hunter-gatherer there, I would most value the physical and mental skills such a lifestyle develops. In particular the ability to pay attention, to smell, to see, and to hear. When ancient foragers and peasants found a mushroom, for example, they ate it with the utmost attention, aware of every little nuance of flavor, which could distinguish an edible mushroom from its poisonous cousin. Today we do not need such keen awareness. We can walk into a supermarket while texting messages and buy any of a thousand different dishes. Whatever we choose – Italian pizza or Chinese noodles – we are likely to eat in haste in front of the screen, checking emails, or watching some television show, while hardly paying attention to the actual taste. I would also like to note that all human societies – including hunter-gatherer tribes in the primeval forest – rely on some sort of technology (bows and arrows, flint knives, clothes, etc.). Similarly, it is a fantasy to imagine that huntergatherers have always lived «in harmony with nature». Even before the Agricultural Revolution, human hunter-gatherers had driven to extinction about half of the large land mammals of the planet. Mammoths, for example, were eliminated by hunter-gatherers rather than by modern industry.

Do you sometimes take a deliberate timeout from our technologicalsociety?

I dedicate two hours every day to meditation, and every year I take a long meditation retreat for 30, 45 or 60 days. I practice Vipassana meditation, which I have learned from a teacher called S. N. Goenka. Vipassana is a method for observing the mind in a systematic and objective manner. The mind is constantly in contact with body sensations. In every moment we always experience some sensation within the body, and the mind reacts to it. Even when we think that we are reacting to an email or a tweet or a YouTube video, we are in fact responding to some bodily sensation that is present here and now. In Vipassana one trains oneself to observe the body sensations and the mind’s reactions to them in an orderly and objective way, thereby uncovering our deepest mental patterns, and helping us to see reality as it is rather than our own imaginations. Thus meditation is a timeout from technological society, but it is not an escape from reality. It is getting in touch with it. At least for two hours a day I actually observe reality as it is, while for the other 22 hours I get overwhelmed by emails and tweets and funny cat videos.